Cloud Computing - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... Examples of utility computing include Amazon Web Services, Google Applications and Microsoft Azure.
In late 2006, Google CEO Eric Schmidt publicised the cloud computing concept (Aymerich, Fenu, & Surcis, 2008). As discovered during the literature search when preparing this paper, an extensive increase in cloud computing research has occurred, especially starting around 2008. Research efforts emphasise a variety of topics related to cloud computing. Some of these topics include applications and their capabilities, costs, the need for cloud computing, security, reasons for adoption, and growth trends. This particular paper aims to discuss main characteristics of cloud computing as a recent phenomenon, trace its historical development, analyse its effectiveness, advantages and concerns.
In their 2009 article in The Wall Street Journal, Fowler and Worthen write about the term "cloud computing," which has a long history in computer science. They quote Alex Bochannek, a curator at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., who said that engineers have been using cloud images for decades to show where their network joins another more unfamiliar network. As technology advanced, IT specialists started using "cloud" terminology to the Internet. Some of the precursor technologies to cloud computing include Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), distributed computing, virtualisation, and grid computing (Youseff et al., 2008). Cloud computing has strong ties to ubiquitous computing, where multiple computing resources are available for use via the Internet. It also had its roots in the search and retrieval systems that emerged in the 1990s. These search and retrieval systems originally were based of cluster computing but eventually migrated to the geographically dispersed grid computing. Cloud computing can be considered a natural evolution from grid computing in its approach to providing computing resources to remote users.
From the practical perspective, cloud computing constitutes the storage and processing of information at another location. For the last several years, major companies joined the cloud computing bandwagon with their own products. For instance, back in 2006 Amazon.com implemented Elastic Computer Cloud for programmers to rent the company's computers. As cloud computing demand expanded, the types of cloud providers extended to include public and community clouds. Thus, Yahoo, Intel, HP Labs, along with other organizations have started an open cloudcomputing research program, called Open Cirrus on the design, provisioning and management of services at a global, multi-datacenter scale.
As cloud computing demand expands, the types of cloud providers are extending to public and community clouds. From this standpoint, many researchers consider cloud computing to be the third wave of Internet advancement, following the Internet as the first wave and the Web as the second wave.
ANALYSIS OF CLOUD COMPUTING
In 2009, Peter Mell and Tim Grance of the Information Technology Laboratory of
the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a draft working definition of cloud computing. The authors defined cloud computing ...Download file to see next pagesRead More